CH 74

Chapter 74: Finger, Knuckle, Mole (I)

Southwest of the Qingping county seat, farther along from Dustpan Mountain, was an old river that fed all the way into the Yangtze. Its nickname was Wild Duck Pond. 

There had always been folk rumors around Qingping that this river had a river god. The river god was said to protect that stretch of land, bringing auspicious winds and rains to the fields, making the fish and water creatures beautiful and delicious, and even that whenever disrespectful people had tried to fill the river and build human homes above it, everything that they had tried to build had crumbled.

Eventually, a temple to the river god had been erected on its banks, allowing people from all over the land to come and pray for good fortune and peace of mind.

But Wild Duck Pond was ultimately a rural, wild river. Although people occasionally visited the river god's temple, at night, there were no visitors nor lights –– an ideal place for a haunting.

That night, for the first time, the temple was drenched in dim light: two lantern flames wavered gently at the foot of the river god's statue, casting a golden glow into the hall. Two people knelt on the praying mats inside the temple: one was a short, stout middle-aged man, and the other was a skinny young boy. 

A young monk dressed in a white cloud-like robe stood by the light and laid out a yellow slip of paper on the altar so that it was illuminated by the lanterns. Holding back his sleeve and dipping his brush in ink, he inscribed text onto the yellow paper:

Jiang Shining

The seventh day of the eighth month, Bing Yin year.

Just outside the temple door, a man dressed in black leant sat atop the wizened branches of an old tree, leaning lazily against its trunk, with one leg propped up and the other swinging lightly down. Under the lantern flame that seeped out from inside the temple, his pale face shone with warmth, and the contour of his handsome brows seemed softer and more tender.

He was none other than Xue Xian.

That evening had been a rare late night for the Fang compound. Drunk on wine, everyone in the household had fallen fast asleep upon lights out. And to Xue Xian and his group, that had been the time for them to slip out.

"Aren't you worried that, from now on, your sister will burn you less paper money?" Xue Xian asked. He leaned one arm against his bent knee, and the other swung idly by his side, fiddling with the leaves on the tree.

Jiang Shining was standing at the foot of the tree, looking up at him. He shook his head and said, "My sister is too kind. She doesn't have the heart."

"But you have the heart to leave without bidding farewell," Xue Xian said as he absent-mindedly ripped off a couple of leaves and tore at them.

"If I don't leave at night, I really won't be able to leave during the day. All she has to do is cry at me, and that'll be that." Jiang Shining laughed. "Smaller pain is better than greater pain. I have to go. I left her a letter."

Xue Xian nodded. "Alright. She's your sister, not mine."

He tilted his head and studied that skinny bookworm, looking him up and down. Finally, he added, "Are you sure? There'll be no turning back."

"Yes." Jiang Shining nodded. "My parents have departed, and my sister is doing very well. I have no regrets, so I must go. Why would a soul linger in the yang realm and not move onto the afterlife?"

Indeed –– if he waited too long, then it would become harder to re-enter the circle of life, which was not a good thing.

"All good things must come to an end, and all friends must part," Jiang Shining said as he looked down at his own body, then studied his companions inside the temple, and finally looked back up at Xue Xian.

Those three years that he'd floated listlessly around the charred Jiang compound had been mere shadows and reflections, gone in the blink of an eye, and he could barely even remember anything from that time now. His only clear memory was standing in the corner of the west wing, looking out at the dry patches of weeds across the courtyard, and seeing a young man dressed in black, with sickly pale skin, but with an arrogant beauty to the crook of his brow. 

From then on, he had had a paper body, he had found the trapped souls of his parents, and he had travelled this far, had crossed the long, winding river, had written a long, meandering letter, bidding his sister goodbye...

"I just realised––" Jiang Shining suddenly said to Xue Xian. "I never thanked you."

Xue Xian scoffed. "Thanked me for what?"

Too many things –– too many to say in a few sentences. Jiang Shining smiled.

From inside the temple, Xuanmin looked out at them and nodded at Jiang Shining. He lit the folded paper in his hand on fire, and as the yellow flame rose, he brought a stick of incense to it, which began to burn with a serene wisp of smoke.

Slowly, the paper turned to ash, and the incense, spent, dropped to the altar.

Jiang Shining's body became fainter and fainter...

Shrouded by the thin, gloomy smoke of the burning paper, Jiang Shining clasped his hands and bowed deeply to Xuanmin, then turned and did the same to Xue Xian.

"Look at you being all corny now. Do you think that if you kiss some ass at the last minute, I'll remember to burn you paper money each year?" Xue Xian said. He squinted at Jiang Shining's ever-fading silhouette as though in a trance.

"No need for the paper money. I won't be able to repay all that." All Jiang Shining could do, then and there in that river god's temple, was wish them peace.

After all, with that farewell, they would never meet again.

The last stack of ash dropped away from Xuanmin's incense, and with it, Jiang Shining was gone.

Xue Xian continued to stare at the spot where he'd been standing. As he hopped down from the tree, his black robes floated up into the night then fell, and, with the rhythm of his footsteps, swept lightly across the grass.

He stood by the temple door, yet did not go in. He watched Xuanmin stand by the altar and refresh the core of the lantern flames, and his heart began to stir as, out of nowhere, a sense of regret swelled within him.

Under the glow of the lanterns, Xuanmin glanced over at him, then looked away.

He looked down at the altar and slowly folded up the sheet of paper on which the ash had collected and folded it a few times. Then, with a sweep of his sleeve, that flickering flame travelled into the heart of the folded paper –– a rudimentary river lantern.

As Xuanmin held the lantern in one hand, he came striding over to Xue Xian.

The river god's temple stood on a low platform above the ground. Xuanmin stopped by the threshold and handed the river lantern to Xue Xian, that serene gaze of his landing on Xue Xian and then receding as lightly as a dragonfly across a pond. "This river's true name is Peace," he said.

Peace for living souls, and passage for dead souls. 

Xue Xian held the lantern as his gaze lingered on Xuanmin –– suddenly, the monk raised his hand and brought it to Xue Xian's cheek.

As those warm fingers touched his skin, Xue Xian's eyes flickered.

But just as quickly, that warmth disappeared.

"A dead leaf," Xuanmin said softly. With a twist of his fingers, he crumbled the dry leaf that he had plucked from the side of Xue Xian's face and let its tiny fragments fall onto the ground by their feet.

Xue Xian looked away. "Uh-huh," he said. He turned and walked to the riverbank and placed that simple lantern full of the ashes that had saved Jiang Shining's soul onto the surface of the water. As the glowing light floated slowly away from them, it felt as though they were sending an old friend to the gates of the afterlife.

It suddenly occurred to Xue Xian what that strange sense of regret had been ––

In the instant that Jiang Shining had faded to nothing, he had felt a rare twinge of heartbreak that came with the sudden feeling of something having gone missing. Jiang Shining had been an annoying, bumbling fool, but as he vanished, Xue Xian felt an emptiness around him.

All good things must come to an end, and all friends must part. Besides, Xue Xian's destiny was an almost infinite life. Everyone around him would ultimately turn old and grey, and then disappear never to be seen again, including Xuanmin...

Xue Xian frowned –– the thought made him feel exceptionally sorrowful; it was more than mere regret.

In the meantime, on a low mountain peak to the south of the river god's temple, a large group of men and horses were silently resting. Beneath the smudge of moonlight, one could see that their white robes were riddled with holes and tears, and that they looked haggard –– as though they had recently emerged from a harrowing and violent experience.

They were the group from the Ministry of Ceremonies that Xue Xian had trapped within a cage made of thunder and lightning.

Borrowing from the power of the moon and the latent magic inherent in the forests of the mountain, they healed themselves, yet remained shrouded in darkness with not even a single candle, as though purposely shrouding themselves in the night.

"Are you sure that's them there?" The Taizhu had taken off his mask and was rearranging his long hair while pointing with his chin at a hovering light in the distance.

"Without a shadow of doubt," the Taipu replied, nodding.

From where they stood, they could see some of the lights in the temple, but could not see any of the visitors. All of their information came from the Taipu's divinations.

Although she had been thwarted the previous night, overall the Taipu's divinations were highly accurate and she rarely made any mistakes. The fact that she was so sure made the Taizhu sure, too.

"It's just that––" the Taizhu suddenly said as he finished tying his hair and began to fiddle with his mask. "Actually, I still have some doubts..."

Shocked, the Taipu looked over at him. "What do you mean?"

"Before, things had happened so quickly that we did not take note of something important. When we saw the Great Priest come toward us at Dustpan Mountain, we bowed, and were about to speak, but then we received his letter." He frowned and added, "At the time, did you see the Great Priest actually send the letter?"

They had previously twice been witness to the Great Priest sending a letter: apparently, in the instant that the Great Priest burned the letter, it would appear with the recipient as an exact facsimile. There was no fear of delay.

At the time, the Taizhu had not even dared to raise his head from the bow, let alone watch the Great Priest burn a letter.

"Perhaps he had just burned it before turning the corner on the mountain road, and the moment that he took the turn and met us was the moment we received the letter," the Taipu theorised. Then she added, in a confident voice, "But don't worry. That was undoubtedly the Great Priest. As he walked away, I caught a glimpse of his finger."

The Taizhu was stunned. "His finger?"

Although the officials within the Ministry of Ceremonies did get to see the Great Priest relatively more often, and despite the fact that they had grown up with the Ministry, the Taizhu and Taipu had had very little opportunity to get physically close to the Great Priest, since the latter hated to be around others.

Thus, they did not have much knowledge of the details of the Great Priest's appearance, such as whether he had freckles or scars, and if so, where they were.

But theTaipu did know about one of them...

It was from the first time she'd ever met the Great Priest. She'd been seven years old, jaundiced and rake-thin, like a soy bean with a large head and a frail body. At the time, she'd lived in abject poverty, with her father long dead and her mother severely ill and on her deathbed.

She'd been kneeling by the single bed in her shack of a home, weeping so hard that she could barely breathe, when a monk had knocked on the door.

That was when she'd first seen him: he'd worn a snow-white robe and had been immensely tall, so that, from her child's point of view, she had only been able to see the bottom of his chin.

He had bent over and reached out a hand to her, and that hand had been handsome and structured, and as clean as if it had never touched a speck of dirt. Although he'd been wearing that silver beast mask, she had gotten the feeling that he was more beautiful than anyone else she had seen in her short life.

She had forgotten even to continue to cry and had stared dully at the monk. "Who are you?"

That monk's voice had been as calm and still as water, so that as he spoke, she had immediately felt reassured. "My Buddhist name is Tongdeng. I am here to take you to the Ministry of Ceremonies."

She had stared at that slender hand and vigorously nodded, even though she had barely heard what he'd said.

And ever since that day, her life had gone a different way.

Even with all the things that had happened in the subsequent dozen-odd years, as her impression and understanding of the Great Priest drifted from that shock and confusion of their first meeting, and when they were face to face, she now revered him even more than she had all those years ago... despite all that, she remembered every single detail from that first meeting, and would never forget it as long as she lived.

Seeing that the Taipu was zoning out, the Taizhu repeated, "What's with the Great Priest's finger?"

"The Great Priest has a tiny mole on the side of the knuckle of his ring finger," the Taipu said as she came back to the present. "The first time I ever met him, I saw it, and I have never forgotten it. At Dustpan Mountain, I caught a glimpse of his hand and confirmed, without any doubt, that he was the Great Priest."

But her explanation did not repel the Taizhu's doubt. Instead, he frowned and said, "Hmm, I don't think that's right. Remember how a few years back I went into the secret courtyard? I went in to make a report, and the Great Priest was playing chess in the pagoda. As I stood by him, for some reason that I can't remember, I studied his hand intently. Oh right, it was because that day the two of us had been talking about hands, so I sneakily looked at the Great Priest's hand. I'm completely sure that he does not have a mole."